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Turtle Release Project
by Karen Rispin

Everyone knows, and almost everyone likes, box turtles. Harmless, and unaggressive, with a little half smile built into their face, they are hard to dislike. Yet these little turtles are far from ordinary. They can live up to 100 years, and freeze nearly solid each winter without dying. There is good evidence that we may be losing them. Road kill, collection for the pet trade and habitat loss is eating away at their population. Fire ants, which have been introduced, may also cause large losses of nests and hatchlings. Researchers think that many populations of box turtles are essentially the walking dead. They have not produced enough young turtles to replace lost turtles for years, yet long lived adult turtles left mask this loss. In spite of the need to understand whether or not enough baby turtles are surviving to adulthood, we know almost nothing about small juvenile box turtles.

Our study will be the first time (as far as we can ascertain) anyone has done radio telemetry on small juvenile box turtles. We will be using tiny radio transmitters recently developed to track bats. The tiny turtles are about the size of a Ritz cracker are so well camouflaged that virtually all the scientists who have studied box turtles have commented on the fact that they almost never find turtles smaller than 5 cm in length (2.5 inches). Even among turtles kept in captivity, the young are very rarely seen unless they are hatched by incubation and kept inside. Neonate box turtles are notoriously hard to keep healthy indoors. Because of this, almost nothing is known about the life style of these tiny turtles. Until they are about 5 to 6 cm long their shell is not fully ossified (turned to bone) and they can not close up tightly, so they are an easy mouthful for many predators. Small body size makes it much easier for them to dry out and die of dehydration. Because of their higher risk of predation and dehydration, we think the small turtles may choose different habitat than do the adults.

Our goal is to find out more about the lifestyle of these tiny juvenile box turtles so that we can help make sure the little turtle with the built in half smile is with us for many years.
 

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